Raspberry Pi Measuring Power Output From Solar Panel

Here is my setup.

Raspberry pi measuring power output from solar panel.

This equivalent reistance is also not a fixed value but varies with load current. Powering your pi using solar power will allow you to build green pi projects powered by the sun. 30 watt solar panel with a 12 volt charger hooked up to a 33 amp hour 12 volt battery. Here s a breakdown of.

The solar panel shown in the connection diagram was idealised and in the real world should include an equivalent series resistance. If you plot voltage vs current you ll see that as the load current is increased the output voltage on the panel drops. The entire software stack runs from either windows or a linux raspberry pi. To get the voltage of the thing you re measuring you must add the bus voltage and shunt voltage to get all the components of the measurement.

Off of the battery i have a 12 volt to 5 volt battery eliminator that drops the voltage safely to 5 volts that i spliced into a micro usb cord. You can also easily integrate thermocouples and the pi can sit a few hundred feet away form the panels under test. Also you must wire grounds of the battery solar panel load and the raspberry pi together to be able to measure individual voltages. And with the right solar panel and battery your project can also run continuously forever.

Something i forgot to realize for a long time. The more popular raspberry pi 4 s supply is recommended to be at 5v 2 2 5a current. I ordered the raspberry pi starter kit which includes the official case power supply and sd card in addition to the raspberry pi 3 model b from core electronics and it was delivered a few days later. This guide will show you how to power your raspberry pi using solar panels.

Building a solar powered pi is a surprisingly easy task. The last piece of the pie ha was a basic serial to usb cable. However the pi zero needs only 1 1 5a so make sure to adjust accordingly. I m setting up an off grid solar solution and the mppt controller i purchased only supports modbus via serial.

They re cheap and you can buy them anywhere. Most solar panels in the market today are 9v.